Chess and Snowflakes
by iphianeira
Summary: When someone charms the ceilings to snow, Teddy and Victoire have a chance to spend a day together.


_For the All You Need Is Love Competition and the Achieve That Outstanding Challenge._

* * *

The day was a cold one in winter, and when Victoire sat up in her four-poster bed, she groaned drowsily upon considering the inevitable prospect of lessons today. It was February, and the students of Hogwarts were in that sleepy stage between the refreshment of returning from break and the anticipation of the Easter holidays. To make things worse, the snow had not yet let up since the beginning of the month almost three weeks ago, and thus, Hogwarts, without the electrical comfort of Victoire's old Muggle school, was nearing freezing temperatures.

Another downfall of progressing to Hogwarts was the lack of the snow days that had been given so freely at the old grade school she had attended as a girl. At fourteen, Victoire barely remembered her days with a single-digit age, but she remembered snow days. She remembered the glee and the glory that grade schoolers felt upon discovering that due to Mother Nature's strange whims, they would not be required to sit in uncomfortable desks for eight hours and learn about triangles and Queen Victoria. Even the intelligent children, like Victoire, were always terribly excited to learn that school was cancelled, and it had been her greatest worry upon receiving her Hogwarts letter that she would never again experience a snow day.

So it was a great surprise when, at breakfast, Professor McGonagall, the aged headmistress, tapped her spoon on her glass in a signal for the hall to quiet down and announced that the day's lessons would be cancelled due to snow.

It was not, in fact, the snow outside that did it; instead, some clever prankster had bewitched any part of ceiling that was within a twenty-foot radius of a classroom door to snow throughout the night, and by the time Firenze woke up in his artificially forested room that sat directly next to his classroom, all of the classrooms were covered in a ten-foot blanket of snowflakes and ice.

"Oooh, what are you going to do today?" asked Deanna to the rest of the Hufflepuff girls, who had all sat together at that morning's breakfast.

"I'm sleeping," said Esther with a yawn.

"Taylor and I are going down to the kitchens, maybe making pastries with the house elves," replied Angie. "Wanna come, Deanna?"

"Ooh, I'd love to," she said happily. "What about you, Torie? What're you doing?"

"Vic and me are going and having a snowball fight. Right, Vic?"

Victoire turned around, hearing Teddy's voice. She rather liked Teddy - quite a bit. Perhaps, as a sixth year, he was too old for her, but she couldn't help the crush she had had on him since she had just turned thirteen. He was perfect.

"I never consented to this!" she exclaimed in surprise. "How do you know I like snowball fights, Teddy? What if I don't want to?!"

"You know you do," he said with a smile. It was true - she did. Even if she didn't like snowball fights (in actuality, she loved them), she would've gone with Teddy anyway.

"Alright, alright, I'll come," Victoire said in mock hesitancy, waving to her friends at the Hufflepuff table. Deanna, the only one in their dorm who had confirmed Victoire's crush, gave her a big grin and a thumbs up.

"So what d'you want to do, Vic?" he asked. Teddy was the only one who was allowed to call her Vic; everyone else used Torie. As a baby, her family had used the nickname Torie, but Teddy, ever stubborn, insisted on Vic, saying that it made much more sense than Torie. (Victoire agreed, and she would tell the rest of her family and friends to use Vic if she didn't secretly get a little bit happier whenever Teddy used the nickname reserved for him.)

"I thought we were having a snowball fight," she asked with a knowing grin.

"Ah, we don't _have_ to, Vic," he said, beaming back at her. "I just said that as if we already had plans so your friends wouldn't drag themselves along."

"Teddy!" she exclaimed, half reproachingly, half amused.

"Really, though, what _do_ you want to do?"

"I dunno, really."

"Want to come to the common room?"

"Whose, yours or mine?"

"Mine, I think," Teddy said, "as long as you bring me down to the kitchens afterwards!"

"I _guess _I can make that deal."

Victoire had to admit that she was rather surprised at Teddy's sudden decision to spend the snow day with her; they conversed fairly often but never on their own, only at family gatherings or when passing each other in the hallways. To invite her to enjoy the day with him, as he seemingly had done, was unwonted of him.

They arrived at the Gryffindor Common Room not five minutes later. Teddy had procured a wizard's chess set for Dom for her birthday, and he took it inconspicuously from the table on which it rested as if it was his; the few students that remained in the common room seemed not to suspect a thing. The pair knocked down each other's knights and razed each other's rooks until Victoire looked at an old grandfather clock and noticed that it was already one in the afternoon.

Immediately as she saw the time, she began to feel hungry. "Teddy," she said, drawing out the "y". "Let's go eat!"

"Yeah, okay."

"Really? I thought you'd want to finish the game!"

"You're right, I do. Checkmate," he said with a smug smile.

"Goddammit, Lupin!"

"You asked, I answered."

"I didn't ask anything, Teddy."

"No, I guess you didn't. Wanna pretend you did?"

"No, sorry."

"Fie on you, Weasley."

"Oh, you're calling me Weasley now?"

"You called me Lupin."

"Let's just go to the kitchens, Teddy."

The kitchens, too, were glorious, filled with cakes and pies and a few of the pastries Deanna and Taylor and Angie had made earlier, but Victoire and Teddy, who were both awful cooks, didn't stay long after they had their fill of German chocolate cake and hot chocolate and cinnamon scones. "Where to next, Teddy?" Victoire asked.

"What do you want to do?"

She grinned. "Let's have a snowball fight."

"I _knew_ you wanted to," he said with a victorious smile.

Their snowball fight passed as quickly as had their mini chess tournament. It was a whirl of snowflakes and little cracks of pain as the other's snowballs hit them hard in the back or the shoulder, but it was lovely, and as they finally wore out they fell, laughing, on the snow next to one another.

"Vic," Teddy said quietly after they had calmed down.

"Yeah?"

"Do you know the kid who made all this snow fall?"

"No, of course not," Victoire said, laughing a little bit at his silly question. "Nobody knows who it was."

"I know him."

"Oh, really? Who did it?"

"Me."

"You?! Why?!"

"You," he said softly, and cupping her face in his hands, he tilted his head and pressed his lips to hers.


End file.
